$100M+ intermodal logistics provider: $20M net income impact from lane rationalization and automation

Situation

A $100M+ intermodal logistics provider engaged Cameo Consulting to transform its operation. The company was running a large lane network without knowing which lanes made money, and its 1,200-container fleet had no modern system for tracking maintenance and repair costs. Finance teams were keying invoices and GL codes by hand.

Approach

• Built contribution margin analysis for every customer lane, so leadership could see profit and loss at the lane level for the first time.
• Rationalized the lane network based on that analysis, exiting and repricing lanes that destroyed margin.
• Evaluated, selected, and implemented maintenance-and-repair software across the 1,200-container fleet.
• Automated invoice recording and GL coding using AI document processing, feeding clean data into a cloud data warehouse.
• Allocated maintenance costs by engine runtime and location using telematics data, replacing flat averages with actual usage.

Results

• Roughly $20M in net income impact identified through customer lane rationalization.
• Maintenance-and-repair software live across all 1,200 containers, with costs allocated by engine runtime and location instead of guesswork.
• Invoice recording and GL coding automated, removing manual data entry and landing every invoice in a cloud data warehouse the team can query.
• Lane-level contribution margin reporting now runs on live data, so the analysis does not go stale when the consultant leaves.